Shoemaker, Carolyn

Carolyn Shoemaker is an observational planetary astronomer who has discovered more than 30 comets and 800 asteroids, more than any other astronomer. She received wide recognition and media attention in 1993 after she codiscovered a comet that would impact Jupiter in July 1994. Shoemaker's discovery allowed both amateur and professional astronomers to witness the event, providing important insight into what would happen if a comet hit Earth. The Jupiter comet was named Shoemaker-Levy 9 after Shoemaker and her husband, astronomer and geologist Gene [Page 1344]Shoemaker, and their colleague, amateur astronomer David Levy. Since 1980, Shoemaker has been a visiting scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) Center for Astrogeology in Flagstaff, Arizona, where her husband was founding director. She has conducted regular observations at Palomar Observatory in California and is a research professor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. Shoemaker's career achievements are all the more remarkable because she does not hold an advanced degree in astronomy and came to the field only later in life after raising a family.

Carolyn Shoemaker at the 18-Inch Schmidt at Palomar Observatory in a 1986 photo taken by her husband, Gene.

Carolyn Jean Spellmann Shoemaker was born June 24, 1929, in Gallup, New Mexico. She received a bachelor's degree from Chico State College in California in 1949 and a master's degree in history and political science in 1950. She was a schoolteacher and then, after marrying Gene Shoemaker in 1951, a stay-at-home mother of three children. Carolyn had accompanied her husband on many research trips and helped him as a field assistant for his work mapping and analyzing impact craters. After her children were grown, Shoemaker began working with her husband at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech). She used a stereoscope to review photographs of the night sky, looking for comets and Earth-approaching asteroids, spending as many as 100 hours to find one comet. The couple moved to Arizona, where Gene Shoemaker founded the USGS Center for Astrogeology and his wife worked as a visiting scientist. Gene Shoemaker was killed in a car accident in 1997 while the couple was on a research trip together in Australia; since then, Shoemaker has continued her astronomical observations for USGS.

Shoemaker was awarded an honorary doctorate in science from Northern Arizona University in 1990. She was named a Cloos Scholar of earth and planetary sciences at Johns Hopkins University in 1990. In 1996, she received an Exceptional Achievement Medal from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); that same year Shoemaker was named both a Woman of Distinction by the National Association for Women in Education and a Distinguished Alumna of California State University, Chico. For her collaborations with her husband, she was corecipient of the Rittenhouse Medal of the Rittenhouse Astronomical Society in 1988 and the James Craig Watson Medal for astronomy from the National Academy of Science in 1998.